President of Harvard University

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The President is the chief administrator of Harvard University. Ex officio the chairman of the Harvard Corporation, she or he is appointed by and is responsible to the other members of that body, who delegate to her or him the day-to-day running of the university. At present, former president Derek Bok is serving in an interim capacity; his successor will be Drew Gilpin Faust, currently the dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Harvard is a famously decentralized university, noted for the "every tub on its own bottom" independence of its various constituent faculties. They set their own academic standards and manage their own budgets. The president, however, plays an important part in university-wide planning and strategy. S/he names each faculty's dean (and, since the foundation of the office circa 1990, the university's provost), and grants tenure to recommended professors. (S/he is, however, expected to make such decisions after extensive consultation with faculty members). In recent years the President has also become increasingly responsible for the conduction of fund-raising campaigns. The most recent holder of the office, Lawrence H. Summers, sought to take a very active role in his first few years in office, which won him a mix of praise (for perceived leadership) and criticism (for perceived heedlessness). Summers announced his resignation as President on February 21, 2006, following strained relations with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Derek Bok has been acting as an interim president since Summers's resignation took effect on July 1. On February 9 2007, the Boston Globe reported that Drew Gilpin Faust, Dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study had been chosen as the next president and would be announced as such within a few days [1]; Harvard confirmed the announcement two days later.

Although the job is increasingly administrative, each president is an academic professor in some faculty of the university and will at least occasionally teach courses. As the leaders, furthermore, of one of the U.S.'s most prominent universities, Harvard's presidents can sometimes find themselves in the national spotlight. Several have had significant influence on educational practice or contributed to national policy debates. Eliot, for example, originated America's familiar system of a smorgasbord of elective courses available to each student; Conant worked to introduce standardized testing; Bok and Rudenstine argued for the continued importance of diversity in higher education.

At Harvard's foundation it was headed by a "schoolmaster," Nathaniel Eaton. He was soon dismissed, however; and when in 1640 Henry Dunster was brought in he adopted the title "president." The origins of this title have been grounds for a certain amount of speculation; see President (history of the term).

Harvard was originally founded for the training of Puritan clergy, and even though its mission was soon broadened, nearly all presidents through the end of the 18th century were in holy orders.

All presidents from Leonard Hoar through Nathan Pusey were graduates of Harvard College (i.e. they were undergraduates at the university). Of the presidents since Pusey, Bok took his undergraduate degree at Stanford, Rudenstine at Princeton, and Summers at MIT; but each earned a graduate degree at Harvard. Drew Gilpin Faust will be the first president since the seventeenth century with no earned Harvard degree.

(John Winthrop (1714-1779) served as acting president in 1769 and again in 1773; but both times he declined the offer of the full presidency on grounds of old age.)

(Other minor acting presidents have included William Brattle, Edward Wigglesworth, Henry Ware, Andrew Preston Peabody, and Henry Pickering Walcott.)

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